Warlord Games Zulus

Aside from my own display game, the Leeds Nightowls are doing at least a couple of other shows this year, and Andy is organising a Zulu War display for at least one of them.  To help with the preparation, I've been roped in to paint a few models, which I agreed to do on the proviso that I wasn't to be allowed to keep any!

That may sound like madness, but as I already have unfinished 15mm Zulus, and many thousands of models already in boxes, I really don't want to be led into another unplanned project!  Still I get to assemble and paint some of the models so here follows the fruits of that labour and a review.

A box contains 32 plastic and one metal model, although we divided up the spoils of a rather large club purchase and I went home with a mix of Married and Unmarried troops.  I assembled the Unmarried troops in a standard (for our game) unit of 16 for starters:

The models only come with four basic poses, but a variety of arms and heads.  I must say that these are really well engineered and hide what few joins there are.  To be fair the Unmarried troops are adorned more for parade than battle, but for the gamer who wants visual appeal rather than accuracy they will look attractive.

Painting was a breeze, after all being naked there's very little to do.  I did feel obliged to do three different skin tones to help vary them up.  An I selected the shields of the Imgombamakhosi regiment:

Two bases 80x40mm in my fairly standard fashion.  And a close up:

So do I like the models?  Well yes, they are very nice.  The details are generally spot on, with a mix of small and large shields, knobkerries, axes and Iklwa; I can criticise the fact that some of the spears seem a little long, but that's easily adapted.  And though I feel the Unmarried troops are overdressed, you can minimise the use of luxury kit, or simply just buy the more believable married troops.  With some conversion I'm sure you cold get even more out of the poses (a rather limiting set of rifle arms are included too).

Overall a solid eight out of ten.